Rapport Palmer : L’ONU DOIT DIRE LE DROIT ET NON LE PIETINER

3 septembre 2011, Association France Palestine Solidarité (AFPS) http://www.france-palestine.org (France)

AFPS

Le rapport de l’ONU [1] relatif aux événements tragiques, survenus le 31 mai 2010, lors de la première « Flottille de la paix », considère que « le blocus de Gaza est légal » et que la réaction armée meurtrière israélienne dans les eaux internationales faisant 9 morts a été simplement « excessive ».

Ce rapport constitue donc une sérieuse régression relativement au droit international édicté par l’ONU sur ce sujet : il n’est acceptable ni dans la forme ni sur le fond.

Le blocus de Gaza, mis en place unilatéralement par les dirigeants israéliens sans le moindre accord de l’ONU, constitue une violation flagrante et évidente des Conventions de Genève, en ce qu’il constitue une « punition collective » de tous les Palestiniens de Gaza, comme l’avait déclaré le Haut Commissariat aux Droits de l’Homme des Nations unies en août 2009. Il est donc bel et bien illégal, selon précisément le droit international.

Par ailleurs qualifier d’« excessive » la réaction israélienne aboutissant à causer la mort de 9 civils innocents à bord d’un bateau turc se trouvant dans les eaux internationales constitue un déni du droit international : selon ce dernier, il s’agit tout simplement d’un « crime de guerre ». D’ailleurs, la résolution 1860 du Conseil de sécurité n’assurait-elle pas clairement accueillir « favorablement les initiatives » visant à alléger ce blocus.

Israël a évidemment salué immédiatement le contenu et les auteurs de ce rapport sur la Flottille contrairement au rapport Goldstone que les autorités de ce pays ont refusé et auquel la communauté internationale n’a donné aucune suite.

Ce rapport, rappelons-le, accusait Israël – et l’accuse toujours – de « crimes de guerre, voire de crimes contre l’humanité » perpétrés lors de la guerre de Gaza, dite « Plomb durci », qui a fait 1.400 morts parmi la population gazaouie. Quand le droit international est violé, Israël crie victoire. Quand il est précisé, Israël le refuse sèchement.

Il est temps que les Nations unies disent le chemin de la paix, spécialement au Proche-Orient, et n’encouragent pas, au contraire, ceux qui la refusent jour après jour et qui devraient être sanctionnés. On n’instaurera pas la stabilité internationale et la paix au Proche-Orient sur la mise en miettes du droit international, mais au contraire en affirmant ce dernier contre vents et marées et a fortiori en l’appliquant. De ce point de vue, l’adhésion pleine et entière de l’Etat de Palestine à l’ONU s’inscrit pleinement dans cette démarche qui, à l’inverse du rapport Palmer, légitimera l’organisation internationale.

Le bureau national, le 3 septembre 2011

Communiqué

[1] Deux des 4 rédacteurs se sont opposés à ce rapport tandis qu’un troisième n’est autre que l’ancien président de Colombie, M. Uribe, qui a été imposé par les israéliens qui n’avaient accepté la commission qu’à cette condition

CAN SOUTH AFRICA PROVIDE THE INSPIRATION THAT ISRAEL NEEDS?

In the struggle to achieve justice and equality in a land that has yet to fulfill its promise, what role will be played by those from the iconic country of South Africa, which has transformed itself so remarkably towards justice and equality?

20 JulY 2011, + 972 http://972mag.com (Israel)

By Hagai El-Ad*

I was recently in South Africa for a few days, and I didn’t once bump into Judge Richard Goldstone. As an Israeli, that may be surprising, because in Israel the only recognizable face of South African Jewry is in fact Judge Goldstone – and the way his rough handling by the Jewish community in that country.

But chance encounters do happen. While checking into my Sea Point hotel in Cape Town, I was chatted up by a couple, who, it turned out, happened to be Jewish. They were delighted to discover that I am from Tel Aviv. Their next question, however, caught me off guard.

“Are you thinking of leaving?”

I am not. Israel is my home.

My first visit to Cape Town in 2006 was for a transitional justice conference at the University of Cape Town. This second visit was for a meeting, graciously hosted by South Africa’s Legal Resources Centre (LRC), with peers from other national human rights groups similar to Israel’s Association for Civil Rights (ACRI), the organization I currently head. For many around the world, myself included, South Africa plays a global iconic moral role – especially in the context of human rights, equality, and justice – and even more so, because its people were able to realize these values through an inspiring transformation.

And oh, how we need inspiration.

South African Jewry’s treatment of Judge Goldstone was no source for inspiration. But the group of Habonim Dror activists I met were. The conversation was of a familiar global-Jewish speak: on the one hand, an ethos of social justice, faith in equality and steadfast commitment to fight racism. On the other hand, Israel. How does a South African Jew live the values of social justice and the realize his or her desire to have a meaningful relationship with the State of Israel, given the ongoing realities of occupation, discrimination, and segregation?

A recent example of this unjust reality is the decision of the High Court of Justice, in rejecting an appeal brought forward by ACRI and others, to approve the expansive “permits regime,” a system that systematically limits Palestinian access to their own lands that happen to be located in the “seam zone” (the territory locked between the Green Line and the separation barrier). The barrier’s route was set by Israel at varying distances east of the green line, thus leaving approximately 10 percent of the occupied West Bank freely accessible for Israelis, but restricted to the actual owners of the land. What is the proper term to describe this “permits regime” system?

Another example is the “Nakba Law.” For the Palestinians, Israel’s establishment in 1948 was a national catastrophe, remembered as the Nakba. For the Jews – myself proudly being one – Israel’s independence is the fulfillment of dreams of generations. Reconciling painful truths? Recently, a law was passed in the Knesset depriving certain public funding from those who commemorate Israel’s independence as Nakba Day. ACRI is appealing against this law. Memory and identity should not – indeed, cannot – be regulated through legislation.

Sugar coating these unacceptable realities is not an option – morally or practically. Thus, a different path emerges for a meaningful relationship: one that does not try to Disneyfy a complex reality, but rather a relationship in which all members become part of the endeavor to fix that reality. The young activists I met in Cape Town are no Disney fans. I found their personal struggle, their questioning, and their unyielding commitment to ethically figure it out inspiring.

I traveled back home to Israel with a question close at heart: In the struggle to achieve justice and equality in a land that has yet to fulfill its promise, what role will be played by those from the iconic country of South Africa, which has transformed itself so remarkably towards justice and equality?

*Hagai El-Ad is executive director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI).

Why am I organizing the Gaza boat? Because Jewish history commands me

21 June 2011, Mondoweiss http://mondoweiss.net (USA)

by Jane Hirschmann*

People often ask me why I am part of a team to organize a U.S. Boat to Gaza that will be sailing this month with the next International Flotilla to break the siege of Gaza. They often make clear they are asking because I am an American Jew, whose family survived the Holocaust with some surviving family members ending up in Israel. And my only answer is: How could I not?

My parents raised me with stories about what happened in Germany and their family’s escape. I came to see that Israel represented for them a safe haven should there be another attempt at annihilating Jews. And yet, at the same time, they worried it was not so safe a haven given the animosity and physical threats and violence in the area.

But no one ever mentioned the displacement of 750,000 Arabs that was the result of the creation of Israel. I vaguely knew there were people living there, but I was never curious about who these “others” were. All I took away from my family’s history and the atrocities endured was that this should never happen again to anyone, anywhere.

Growing up in the ‘60s, I became active in opposition to the war in Vietnam, the anti-apartheid struggle and the women’s rights movement and later became involved in opposing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As a social worker, I was focused on social justice issues but never questioned the relationship between the U.S. and Israel and their policies regarding Palestinians.

Then came the war on Gaza and a real political awakening for me.

Operation Cast Lead and the Goldstone Report were the catalysts. In November 2008, the ceasefire ended: Israeli soldiers broke it in a cross-border raid killing six members of Hamas and, in response, rockets were launched into Israel. Israel, fortified with American weaponry, attacked the people of Gaza. Approximately 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed compared to 13 Israelis. Gaza was pulverized. Judge Richard Goldstone and his team did a thorough report of the causalities on both sides. There was no doubt that the people of Gaza were disproportionally affected.

Right after the invasion in Gaza I realized I could no longer remain silent. I became one of the organizers of a group called Jews Say No! in New York City. We wanted to speak out and to make clear that the Israeli government did not speak in our name as they claimed. I began reading about the occupation, settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the building of the separation wall, Jewish-only streets for Israeli settlers, special identity papers for Palestinian citizens of Israel (one step away from wearing a yellow star) and the other indignities endured by the people of Palestine on a daily basis. And I saw the total collusion by the U.S. government – its unconditional support no matter what the Israeli government did, including giving them 30 billion dollars over a 10-year period for weaponry (F16s, Apache helicopters, white phosphorous, Caterpillar bulldozers used to destroy homes in Bedouin encampments) used ruthlessly against the Palestinians. This was intolerable for me.

I understand the fears and frustrations of Israelis being fired upon by rockets and the resultant deaths and injuries. But what about the thousands of Palestinians being killed and whose homes, schools, hospitals, farms, mills, factories and infrastructure are being destroyed? What about a people living under a brutal occupation who are being denied the right to live with dignity in their own homeland?

The siege and blockade of Gaza continue. The Israeli government controls the land, sea and air of this small area (25 miles long and roughly six miles wide) where 1.6 million people live. There has been no movement in recent years unless Israel allowed it. (Egypt’s partial opening of the Rafah gate to human traffic, though not to commerce, is a positive sign if it is allowed to grow). Most people cannot travel in or out of Gaza because of continuing restrictions, 61 percent of the population is food insecure, the unemployment rate is around 45 percent, one of the highest in the world, and exports remain banned with the exception of limited items like strawberries and carnations for European markets. Gaza is called an open-air prison even by England’s Prime Minister, David Cameron.

Given all this, I can remain silent no longer. Every day Palestinians are confronting the Israeli government at the wall, at check points, at demolition sites. They risk their lives. Like the Freedom Rides our boat is sailing to call attention to the illegal occupation and siege of Gaza.

My humanity and my Jewishness – Jewish history – demand my being part of an organizing effort to end the inhumane treatment of the Palestinians. The U.S. Boat, called The Audacity of Hope, will sail in late June to Gaza as part of the Freedom Flotilla 2-Stay Human. We will be approximately 50 individuals from across the U.S. committed to non-violence, human rights and freedom and justice for the Palestinian people.

To date, tens of thousands of individuals and over 80 organizations have endorsed this U.S. campaign and each day more sign on to travel with us in name. We travel in peace for justice, and I am proud to be part of this international effort.

*Jane Hirschmann is a member of Jews Say No!, a psychotherapist from New York City, co-author of three books, and one of the organizers of the U.S. Boat to Gaza. More information about the The Audacity of Hope is available at www.ustogaza.org.

UPDATE: Original headline on this post said that Hirschmann is on the boat. She is not.

Legislation against human rights groups is political persecution

The new legislative initiative which would ban human rights organizations from employing national service volunteers ignores their democratic mission.

13 June 2011, Haaretz הארץ Editoral (Israel)

Kadima MK Israel Hasson's new initiative under which human rights organizations would be denied the right to employ national service volunteers is pure political persecution.

The proposal is based almost entirely on the claim that these organizations "besmirched the Israel Defense Forces, its officers and its soldiers."

According to Hasson, certain organizations - first and foremost, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the local chapters of Physicians for Human Rights and Amnesty, and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel - sought to persuade Judge Richard Goldstone to investigate whether Israel committed war crimes during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in early 2009, and even urged the UN inquiry committee he headed "to accuse Israel of anti-humanitarian activity and of grave violations of human rights."

Hasson is ignoring the nature of the mission that human rights organizations have taken upon themselves - namely, a constant battle to uphold the ethical, humanist values without which a democratic society cannot exist, or, at the very least, could not maintain its democratic image.

Demanding an investigation of the army is neither treason nor slander, as Hasson and his supporters are trying to paint it. Indeed, given that both the army and the political decision-makers shunned a courageous and thorough probe of what happened during Cast Lead - an operation in which hundreds of Palestinians were killed - their application to Goldstone was essential.

Moreover, it's clear that their involvement with the Goldstone Report is nothing but a transparent excuse on which Hasson sought to hang his desire to embitter the lives of these organizations and intensify the delegitimization campaign against them. And he is not alone. He is supported by more than just a handful of Knesset members, most of them from the extreme right.

But Hasson, the bill's sponsor, is not a delusional extremist; he belongs to a party that defines itself as Israel's main centrist party. Yet so far, Kadima chairwoman and opposition leader Tzipi Livni has not responded to Hasson's proposal. Her silence is particularly worrying because she has until now been viewed as a rock standing firm against the recent wave of anti-democratic legislation.

If Livni truly sees herself and her party as an alternative to the present government, she can no longer remain silent in the face of this campaign of silencing and intimidation.

Israeli campaign to avoid accountability for Gaza war crimes must be rejected

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC STATEMENT

Jews for Justice for Palestinians http://jfjfp.com

5 April 2011

Israeli campaign to avoid accountability for Gaza war crimes must be rejected

Recent Israeli government calls for the UN to retract the 2009 report of its Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict are a cynical attempt to avoid accountability for war crimes and deny both Palestinian and Israeli victims of the 2008-2009 conflict the justice and reparations they deserve, Amnesty International said today.

Statements by leading Israeli politicians that Israel’s conduct in the 22-day conflict in Gaza and southern Israel has been vindicated, following the publication of a Washington Post opinion piece by Justice Richard Goldstone on 1 April 2011, are based on a deliberate misinterpretation of Justice Goldstone’s comments. The international community must firmly reject these attempts to escape accountability and act decisively for international justice, as it has done on Libya, Sudan and other situations where war crimes and possible crimes against humanity have been committed.

The UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, composed of Justice Goldstone and three other eminent international jurists, examined violations of international humanitarian and international human rights law committed by all sides during the 2008-2009 conflict. Its September 2009 report echoed the findings documented by Amnesty International, other human rights organizations and independent observers, and called on the Israeli and Palestinian authorities to conduct credible, independent investigations into alleged war crimes and possible crimes against humanity within six months or face potential UN Security Council referral to the International Criminal Court.

The report’s recommendations concerning potential international justice mechanisms remain unimplemented more than 18 months later, despite the fact that the Israeli authorities and Hamas de facto administration have both failed to conduct investigations that are prompt, thorough, independent, impartial, and effective, as required by the UN General Assembly.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Defence Minister Ehud Barak, and other senior Israeli politicians have seized on Justice Goldstone’s new statement that the Israeli military did not intentionally target civilians during the conflict and has conducted some investigations to call for the entire Fact-Finding Mission’s report to be retracted – or, as Prime Minister Netanyahu put it, “tossed into history’s trash can”. The US State Department has supported this position, with a spokesperson saying that the US government did not see any evidence that the Israeli government had committed any war crimes during the conflict.

As a spokesperson for the Human Rights Council has today made clear, comments made in an opinion piece do not provide a sufficient legal basis for overturning a UN report that has been discussed and endorsed by both the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly. Nor are the self-serving calls of Israeli political leaders, some of whom were members of the Israeli war cabinet which made the policy decisions during Operation “Cast Lead”, the 22-day conflict in which some 1,400 Palestinians, including some 300 children, were killed by Israeli forces. Aborting the process towards an international justice solution would also preclude any possibility of justice or reparations for Israeli victims of the conflict, who suffered from hundreds of indiscriminate rockets and mortars launched into southern Israel by Hamas’ military wing and other Palestinian armed groups in Gaza.

Amnesty International has monitored and critiqued the Israeli military investigations into its actions during Operation “Cast Lead”, and has condemned both the continuing failure of the  Hamas authorities to investigate alleged violations committed by Palestinian armed groups during the conflict and the ongoing firing of indiscriminate rockets into southern Israel.

In consequence of the failure of both the Israeli and Palestinian sides to conduct proper independent investigations and ensure accountability and justice for the victims, Amnesty International has called on a range of international actors to now bring international justice mechanisms to bear in order to meet these objectives and end impunity.

In particular, Amnesty International has called on the General Assembly to consider the Fact-Finding Mission’s report at its 66^th session starting in September 2011, and submit the report to the UN Security Council with a recommendation that the latter body consider referring the situation to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC). This recommendation was also included in a resolution passed by the Human Rights Council on 25 March 2011.

Amnesty International also urged the ICC Prosecutor to seek a legal determination from the Pre-Trial Chamber on whether an investigation could be launched on the basis of a 2009 declaration by the Palestinian Authority accepting the Court’s jurisdiction over crimes committed on the Palestinian territories. Finally, we have consistently called for national authorities of other states to exercise universal jurisdiction over war crimes committed during the 2008-2009 Gaza conflict, just as we urge states to exercise universal jurisdiction over war crimes in other conflicts where the domestic authorities are unwilling or unable to act.

Background

In a personal op-ed, Justice Goldstone contrasted the investigations conducted by the Israeli military into alleged violations by Israeli forces with the Hamas de facto administration’s failure to investigate alleged violations by Palestinian armed groups in Gaza. He also commented that the Israeli military investigations indicate that civilians in Gaza “were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy” by Israeli forces. The op-ed is available at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/reconsidering-the-goldstone-report-on-israel-and-war-crimes/2011/04/0

While Justice Goldstone’s comments question one of the Fact-Finding Mission’s conclusions – that certain Israeli attacks during Operation “Cast Lead” intentionally targeted civilians – the op-ed in no way constitutes a retraction of the entire Fact-Finding Mission report. The other three members of the UN Fact-Finding Mission have not issued similar public comments questioning any of the report’s conclusions.

The Fact-Finding Mission report examined 11 incidents in which Israeli forces launched direct attacks against civilians that resulted in civilian deaths, and found that in these incidents, “the conduct of the Israeli armed forces constitutes grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention in respect of wilful killings and wilfully causing great suffering to protected persons and, as such, give[s] rise to individual criminal responsibility.” Justice Goldstone’s op-ed mentions only one of these incidents, an Israeli attack on 5 January 2009 which killed 21 members of the al-Sammouni family, which is the subject of an ongoing Israeli military investigation. Assessing whether specific Israeli attacks on civilians during the conflict were deliberate is extremely difficult because the Israeli military has not released the evidence that would allow independent parties to evaluate its conclusions. Amnesty International has not argued that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) targeted Palestinian civilians “as a matter of policy”, but rather that IDF rules of engagement and actions during the conflict failed to take sufficient precautions to minimize civilian casualties. Justice Goldstone’s recent comments do not dispute this assessment.

Amnesty International, the Fact-Finding Mission, and other human rights organizations documented many other serious violations by Israeli forces, including war crimes, during the conflict. These include indiscriminate attacks and the use of weapons such as white phosphorus and flechettes in civilian areas; wanton destruction of civilian property and infrastructure; attacks on UN facilities, medical facilities and personnel; and the use of Palestinian civilians as “human shields”. While the Israeli authorities have investigated some of these incidents, all the investigations have been conducted by the Israeli military, and overseen by the Military Advocate General Corps, the same body which was responsible for providing legal advice to the IDF during Operation “Cast Lead”.

As noted in the recent report of the UN Committee of Independent Experts appointed to monitor and assess the investigations, Israel has failed to investigate the actions of “those who designed, planned, ordered and oversaw Operation Cast Lead”, the Israeli military investigations have lacked transparency, and more than one third of the incidents highlighted by the Fact-Finding Mission are still “unresolved or unclear”. To date, only four Israeli soldiers have been indicted on criminal charges relating to Operation “Cast Lead”, and only one has served prison time for credit card theft.

Amnesty International’s own assessment of the Israeli investigations concurred with the Committee of Independent Experts’ report. More than two years after the conflict, there is no way for objective, impartial observers to view Israel’s investigations as adequate, independent, or effective in bringing perpetrators of alleged violations to justice.

The Committee of Independent Experts’ report, released on 18 March 2011, is available at: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/16session/A.HRC.16.24_AUV.pdf

Amnesty International’s latest assessment of the Israeli and Palestinian investigations into the Gaza Conflict, released on 18 March 2011, is available at: http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE15/018/2011/en
Issues of impunity and the denial of rights in the Israel context will be explored further at two upcoming AIUK events

Deliberate Discrimination, Deliberate Deprivation
http://www.amnesty.org.uk/events_details.asp?ID=1794
Tue 12 April 2011 at 7pm

War Child
http://www.amnesty.org.uk/events_details.asp?ID=1772
Thu 14 April 2011 at 7pm

What’s behind Goldstone’s flip-flop?

Jurist Richard Goldstone found that Israel had intentionally targeted civilians during its 2008-09 assault on the Gaza Strip. He’s now backpedaled, but his explanation that Israel gave him new data is insufficient.

5 April 2011, Los Angeles Times, Editorial

Few recent events in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been as wildly controversial and polarizing as the release of the Goldstone report, a United Nations-sponsored study prepared in the aftermath of Israel’s devastating, 3-week-long assault on the Gaza Strip in the winter of 2008-09.

The report was the work of a U.N. fact-finding mission chaired by Richard Goldstone, a former justice of South Africa’s highest court. Although Israel had publicly defended Operation Cast Lead as a tough but legitimate response to months of cross-border rocket attacks by Hamas militants, Goldstone and his colleagues saw it differently: They concluded that Israel had intentionally targeted civilians in “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population.” A blunt, no-holds-barred broadside against Israel, the report was dismissed as biased and exaggerated by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which felt it gave moral support to those seeking to “delegitimize” the Jewish state. But it was taken extremely seriously by many others, because of Goldstone’s respected mainstream credentials and the U.N.’s imprimatur, and because about 1,400 Palestinians were killed during the assault, compared with 13 Israelis.

For much of the world, that’s where the story ended. Until Friday, that is, when, in a bizarre denouement, Goldstone himself disavowed one of the central claims of his report. In an op-ed article in the Washington Post, Goldstone shocked supporters and opponents alike by saying that he no longer believes that Israel intentionally killed civilians in Gaza and that “if I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone report would have been a different document.”

Well, uh, OK. Acknowledging one’s mistakes is generally considered a virtue. But is it really that easy? The original report contained 575 pages of damning details — attacks on mosques, hospitals, apartment buildings, refugee shelters. The fact-finding mission made three trips to the region over four months, conducted 188 interviews, reviewed 300 reports, solicited testimony and held public hearings. In case after case, the final report alleged that Palestinian civilians were targeted by Israel in violation of a host of international laws. But now the chairman of the panel says … never mind?

Goldstone explains his new position as follows: When he and his colleagues wrote that Israel had deliberately targeted civilians, it seems, they didn’t really have solid evidence. Rather, he says, they “had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion” (partly, he says, because the Israeli government did not cooperate with the investigation). Now, as a result of Israel’s subsequent investigations into some 400 allegations of misconduct, he sees that the facts “indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.” If only the Israelis had cooperated with his investigation from the start, he suggests, this unfortunate misunderstanding might never have occurred!

Goldstone gives only one example in his article: the killing of more than 20 members of the Samouni family. The report says the deaths occurred at 6:30 a.m. on Jan. 5, 2009, as a result of “projectiles” apparently shot from Apache helicopters. Goldstone and his colleagues visited the site and interviewed numerous witnesses, concluding, among other things, that the “conduct of the Israeli armed forces in these cases would constitute grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention in respect of willful killings and willfully causing great suffering to protected persons and as such give rise to individual criminal responsibility.”

Now, however, Goldstone says that the shelling was “apparently the consequence of an Israeli commander’s erroneous interpretation of a drone image” and that an Israeli officer is under investigation for having ordered the attack.

Goldstone’s flip-flop is fascinating but mystifying, and his explanation is utterly insufficient. Deliberately killing civilians is a crime of war under international law. If civilians die, by contrast, as “collateral damage” in a legitimate operation against a legitimate military target, that’s a very different thing — a horrible and tragic but sometimes unavoidable reality of armed conflict. At the very least, Goldstone needs to offer substantially more explanation than was available in his brief op-ed article. If he honestly believed his initial assertions but now has been persuaded as a result of Israel’s follow-up investigations that he was wrong, then he ought to make the world aware of the facts that changed his mind. (While he’s at it, he might let us know whether it was perhaps irresponsible to have made such sweeping assertions in the first place.)

On the other hand, “intentionality” is only one of the allegations in the Goldstone report. What are we to make now of all the other charges? What about the charge that Israel’s military applied “disproportionate force,” and that it failed to “take all feasible precautions” to avoid and minimize loss of civilian life? How about the allegations of “unlawful and wanton” destruction of property, not justified by military necessity? What about the victims denied access to ambulances and medical care? Are we to throw all of these serious charges out the window as well, or just the ones that suggest that Israel intentionally targeted civilians?

Israeli officials understandably feel both frustrated and vindicated by Goldstone’s disavowal of one of his own chief findings. The report was a public relations catastrophe for Israel, and it’s no surprise that Netanyahu now wants the entire document officially withdrawn. On the other side, those who agreed with the report’s conclusion that the Gaza war was punitive and disproportionate are now unsure what to believe.

The charges leveled by the Goldstone report were extremely tough — tough enough to help reframe the Israeli-Palestinian debate around the world. If any of them were wrong, then Goldstone owes the world a detailed explanation so that the truth can be revealed.

Goldstone’s shameful U-turn

4 April 2011, The Electronic Intifada  http://electronicintifada.net

Ilan Pappe

“If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone report would have been a different document.” Thus opens Judge Richard Goldstone’s much-discussed op-ed in The Washington Post. I have a strong feeling that the editor might have tampered with the text and that the original sentence ought to have read something like: “If I had known then that the report would turn me into a self-hating Jew in the eyes of my beloved Israel and my own Jewish community in South Africa, the Goldstone report would never have been written at all.” And if that wasn’t the original sentence, it is certainly the subtext of Goldstone’s article.

This shameful U-turn did not happen this week. It comes after more than a year and a half of a sustained campaign of intimidation and character assassination against the judge, a campaign whose like in the past destroyed mighty people such as US Senator William Fulbright who was shot down politically for his brave attempt to disclose AIPAC’s illegal dealings with the State of Israel.

Already In October 2009, Goldstone told CNN, “I’ve got a great love for Israel” and “I’ve worked for many Israeli causes and continue to do so” (Video: “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” 4 October 2009).

Given the fact that at the time he made this declaration of love he did not have any new evidence, as he claims now, one may wonder how could this love could not be at least weakened by what he discovered when writing, along with other members of the UN commission, his original report.

But worse was to come and exactly a year ago, in April 2010, the campaign against him reached new heights, or rather, lows. It was led by the chairman of the South African Zionist Federation, Avrom Krengel, who tried to prevent Goldstone from participating in his grandson’s bar mitzvah in Johannesburg since “Goldstone caused irreparable damage to the Jewish people as a whole.”

The South African Zionist Federation threatened to picket outside the synagogue during the ceremony. Worse was the interference of South Africa’s Chief Rabbi, Warren Goldstein, who chastised Goldstone for “doing greater damage to the State of Israel.” Last February, Goldstone said that “Hamas perpetrated war crimes, but Israel did not,” in an interview that was not broadcast, according to a 3 April report the website of Israel’s Channel 2. It was not enough: the Israelis demanded much more.

Readers might ask “so what?” and “why could Goldstone not withstand the heat?” Good questions, but alas the Zionization of Jewish communities and the false identification of Jewishness with Zionism is still a powerful disincentive that prevents liberal Jews from boldly facing Israel and its crimes.

Every now and again many liberal Jews seem to liberate themselves and allow their conscience, rather than their fear, to lead them. However, many seem unable stick to their more universalist inclinations for too long where Israel is concerned. The risk of being defined as a “self-hating Jew” with all the ramifications of such an accusation is a real and frightening prospect for them. You have to be in this position to understand the power of this terror.

Just weeks ago, Israeli military intelligence announced it had created a special unit to monitor, confront, and possibly hunt down, individuals and bodies suspected of “delegitimizing” Israel abroad. In light of this, perhaps quite a few of the faint-hearted felt standing up to Israel was not worth it.

We should have recognized that Goldstone was one of them when he stated that, despite his report, he remains a Zionist. This adjective, “Zionist,” is far more meaningful and charged than is usually assumed. You cannot claim to be one if you oppose the ideology of the apartheid State of Israel. You can remain one if you just rebuke the state for a certain criminal policy and fail to see the connection between the ideology and that policy. “I am a Zionist” is a declaration of loyalty to a frame of mind that cannot accept the 2009 Goldstone Report. You can either be a Zionist or blame Israel for war crimes and crimes against humanity — if you do both, you will crack sooner rather than later.

That this mea culpa has nothing to do with new facts is clear when one examines the “evidence” brought by Goldstone to explain his retraction. To be honest, one should say that one did not have to be the world expert on international law to know that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza in 2009. The reports of bodies such as Breaking the Silence and the UN representatives on the ground attested to it, before and after the Goldstone report. It was also not the only evidence.

The pictures and images we saw on our screens and those we saw on the ground told only one story of a criminal policy intending to kill, wound and maim as a collective punishment. “The Palestinians are going to bring upon themselves a Holocaust,” promised Matan Vilnai, Israel’s deputy minister of defense to the people of Gaza on 29 February 2008.

There is only one new piece of evidence Goldstone brings and this is an internal Israeli army investigation that explains that one of the cases suspected as a war crime was due to a mistake by the Israeli army that is still being investigated. This must be a winning card: a claim by the Israeli army that massive killings by Palestinians were a “mistake.”

Ever since the creation of the State of Israel, the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed by Israel were either terrorists or killed by “mistake.” So 29 out of 1,400 deaths were killed by an unfortunate mistake? Only ideological commitment could base a revision of the report on an internal inquiry of the Israeli army focusing only on one of dozens of instances of unlawful killing and massacring. So it cannot be new evidence that caused Goldstone to write this article. Rather, it is his wish to return to the Zionist comfort zone that propelled this bizarre and faulty article.

This is also clear from the way he escalates his language against Hamas in the article and de-escalates his words toward Israel. And he hopes that this would absolve him of Israel’s righteous fury. But he is wrong, very wrong. Only a few hours passed from the publication of the article until Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and of course the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate President Shimon Peres commissioned Goldstone with a new role in life: he is expected to move from one campus to the other and hop from one public venue to the next in the service of a new and pious Israel. He may choose not to do it; but then again he might not be allowed to attend his grandson’s bar mitzvah as a retaliation.

Goldstone and his colleagues wrote a very detailed report, but they were quite reserved in their conclusions. The picture unfolding from Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations was far more horrendous and was described less in the clinical and legal language that quite often fails to convey the magnitude of the horror. It was first western public opinion that understood better than Goldstone the implications of his report. Israel’s international legitimacy has suffered an unprecedented blow. He was genuinely shocked to learn that this was the result.

We have been there before. In the late 1980s, Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote a similar, sterile, account of the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Palestinian academics such as Edward Said, Nur Masalha and Walid Khalidi were the ones who pointed to the significant implications for Israel’s identity and self-image, and nature of the archival material he unearthed.

Morris too cowered under pressure and asked to be re-admitted to the tribe. He went very far with his mea culpa and re-emerged as an extreme anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racist: suggesting putting the Arabs in cages and promoting the idea of another ethnic cleansing. Goldstone can go in that direction too; or at least this is what the Israelis expect him to do now.

Professionally, both Morris and Goldstone tried to retreat to a position that claimed, as Goldstone does in The Washington Post article, that Israel can only be judged by its intentions not the consequences of its deeds. Therefore only the Israeli army, in both cases, can be a reliable source for knowing what these intentions were. Very few decent and intelligent people in the world would accept such a bizarre analysis and explanation.

Goldstone has not entered as yet the lunatic fringe of ultra-Zionism as Morris did. But if he is not careful the future promises to be a pleasant journey with the likes of Morris, Alan Dershowitz (who already said that Goldstone is a “repentant Jew”) between annual meetings of the AIPAC rottweilers and the wacky conventions of the Christian Zionists. He would soon find out that once you cower in the face of Zionism — you are expected to go all the way or be at the very same spot you thought you had successfully left behind you.

Winning Zionist love in the short-term is far less important than losing the world’s respect in the long-run. Palestine should choose its friends with care: they cannot be faint-hearted nor can they claim to be Zionists as well as champions of peace, justice and human rights in Palestine.

Ilan Pappe is Professor of History and Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter. His most recent book is Out of the Frame: The Struggle for Academic Freedom in Israel (Pluto Press, 2010).